Things that make you go ‘hmmm’…

Updated on May 6, 2009 By Ken Begg 9 Comments

Uh, isn’t “Major Tom” a song about someone who dies in their amazingly advanced transport vehicle?

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  • Jamie Bergman

    Come now. Next you will suggest that it is silly that KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken) for years used the song, “Sweet Home Alabama” for their theme music. Oh wait, that is silly. ;)

  • sardu

    Maybe the subtext is that the Lincoln is a awesome car to die in.

  • Brandi

    “Space Oddity” (Bowie’s song) is definitely tragic; “Coming Home” is a little more ambiguous (though the odds are that he burns up on re-entry).

    Still, it’s not exactly using a song about exploited labor to tout your “greener” energy program…

  • Marsden

    I saw a really interesting analysis that “Space Oddity” was actually a metaphor about a drug addicted person trying to get drugs and then using them. Bowie was supposed to be using a lot of them at the time. The second song, Ashes to Ashes seems to support that, too, but then again someone might be thinking about this too much, as opposed to not enough, because then they would be making movies/tv, right? Ah, I kill me.

  • Reed

    I recently went to the Dallas Guitar Show and watched a local artist named Jim Suhler perform a couple of sets. He announced one of his songs by saying, “National Public Radio is using this as lead in music on Morning Addition. I don’t think that they knew it was about smuggling marijuana.”

    That’s good stuff.

  • sardu

    In “Coming Home” he seems to make it pretty clear that Major Tom is in fact “going to the light”. I’m pretty sure he suffers the same fate as he did in the Bowie song.

  • wait … I thought that ALL rock songs were thinly disguised metaphors about drugs.

  • The Rev. D.D.

    Except when they’re blatant drug metaphors.

    Like “Cocaine” or “I Don’t Like the Drugs (But the Drugs Like Me” or “Smoke Two Joints.”

    Hell, it’s all drugs in music. Unless it’s sex.

  • Petoht

    The second song, Ashes to Ashes seems to support that

    I thought Ashes to Ashes was him giving the Spiders from Mars a final send off so he could morph into his new personality.

    Then again, it’s Bowie. I wouldn’t be surprised if none of it ever meant anything and he was just doing it to screw with people. I mean, look at 1.Outside